“Fool!” he growled at last. “I couldn’t get up there anyway. It slopes in. A man can’t climb on a ceiling. God!” He slumped back and tried to think rationally. “Let’s see, now. I was coming down the mountain, headed west. The steepest part was just ahead of me when I fell--forty-five-degree slope, about. Not more than twenty feet or so away. This hole, now--yes, it’s close to forty feet wide at the bottom--maybe five feet through to the face of the slant----” He started up eagerly, the realization that he could burrow his way out clearing his brain and putting new life in his racked body. He reached for the sheath knife at his belt, the only digging tool he had. As he stood there with it in his hand a thought flashed over him that drove all the zest from his face. “I don’t know where to begin,” he muttered. “_Which is the west side?_” He looked about helplessly at the prison that hemmed him in. Somewhere, to right or left, ahead or behind, that mass of earth and rock must be comparatively thin, hardly more than a shell separating him from freedom and the broad reaches of the sky. If he could find that spot, strike that downhill side, he might be able to dig through to the outer world in a few hours. If he missed it, started work on the wrong side, his burrowing would only lead him deeper into the mountain, wasting his strength and the precious element of time. And between those two extremes, the heart-warming right and the hopelessly wrong, was no faintest clue to guide him to a decision. Yes, there was one--his compass, of course! Stupid not to have thought of that before; the surest possible proof. Everything was all right now. He fumbled in the side pocket of his coat and drew out the instrument, a watchlike affair in a heavy nickel case. His first glance showed the needle bent crazily beneath the shattered glass, twisted and utterly ruined by the crash of his fall. Mather’s face went hard as he tilted the broken thing in his hand, testing its uselessness with a sort of grim irony. “So-o,” he said bitterly. “You’re about as much good to me as a piece of cheese, aren’t you? Or a chunk of lead--because I could eat the cheese. Well, I guess I’ll have to depend on Old Lady Luck to help me out. I may as well pick out a place that looks like easy digging, anyhow.” He stumbled across the cave and began to pick a way at the wall where the earth was crumbly and yielded readily to knife and hands. A few inches in he struck rock. Working along it, he came finally to loose rubble, but the mass was too large for him to dislodge without starting a disastrous cave-in from above. He would have to try another place. And an hour had been wasted.